Railcar coupler carrier wear plates are a standard in the rail transportation field. Typical coupler wear plates have been designed in configurations to match coupler carriers developed decades before.
Typically, the coupler carrier wear plate is a fairly labor intensive item to replace typically designed with both inner and outer flanges and requiring removal of the coupler for replacement. While this operation is far less capital intensive than replacing a coupler, labor costs, as well as cost for parts and materials, are a significant factor. Further, cost of manufacturing the wear plate is a consideration and different configurations can have improved economy if effectively adaptable for use in the field. Finally, adaptability of a particular coupler carrier wear plate form to a maximum number of different coupler carrier and striker configurations has additional advantages and economy.
The above described coupler carrier wear plate is mounted to the rail car's coupler carrier using preferably metal retaining brackets. These brackets have the primary purpose of retaining the wear plate in position, but have an additional advantage in that they provide protection for the plastic wear plate in the event of a coupler bypass--that is when misaligned couplers of railcars do not couple and one coupler strikes the opposite car.
The configuration of this invention has an advantage in manufacturing over typical "T" shaped wear plates, such as that in U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,839 in that the additional flanges having runs longitudinal (relative to the car) cannot easily be extruded. The brackets and configuration enable ease of manufacture, while positioning the coupler carrier wear plate more securely than either "T" style or channel style wear plates, a channel style wear plate being disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,055,254, commonly owned with this application. The disclosures in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,055,254 and 4,327,839 are incorporated by reference in this application.